Hydrogen Sulfide
by Snakefire1
Summary: At a large gas plant in the far north of Alberta, something has gone terribly, terribly wrong. Poison gas is leaking from the ground, the workers are missing…and the voices are whispering. Can it be stopped? Or will all of North America slowly choke to death on hydrogen sulfide?
1. Prologue

**Prologue**

* * *

 _"Hi, and welcome to your H2S Alive certification training course. The aim of this course is to protect you and other workers from possible exposure to Hydrogen Sulfide gas, also called H2S. It's also called sewer gas, stink gas, and many other names, and can accumulate around oil and gas equipment, pipelines, pulp and paper mills, in sewers, in mines, and in many other locations. When it accumulates in pockets of natural gas, it becomes what is commonly known as "Sour Gas." By taking this course, you will know how to protect yourself from H2S exposure at any and all of these locations."_

The man watching the instructional video on his boss's computer sighed mightily, setting his heavy frame back in his seat and staring at the ceiling. This fucking sucked. The lady in the video seemed kind of hot, and that was honestly the only reason he hadn't tuned out completely.

 _"For a start, what is H2S? Hydrogen Sulfide is a naturally occurring gas that can accumulate in contained or underground spaces. H2S is colourless and invisible in the air, but it has a characteristic odour of rotten eggs, due to the sulfide compounds. It is also HIGHLY flammable. Burning H2S releases SO4, Sulfur Tetraoxide, which is a powerful greenhouse gas. As such, we do not recommend using fire to 'flare off' large H2S leaks."_

The man's nickname among his coworkers was Roach, and he rubbed at his eyes and glanced at his hard hat. He just wanted to go back to work, for fuck's sake. But noooo, the supervisor had come around and asked him about where the SCBA gear was stored, and he didn't know, so now here he was, in the boss's office, fucking forced to watch a review of some shit every oilfield worker knew.

The company, Suncor, was just fucking paranoid at this point. At least the dumb bitch in the video had a half-decent rack on her, thank god for small mercies.

 _"The primary danger from H2S is not its concentration. Simply put, H2S bonds more readily to the iron in your blood than oxygen, meaning that in an environment with unsafe levels of Hydrogen Sulfide, you can suffocate to death while surrounded by oxygen. Suffocation and death can occur within minutes of exposure- which is why it is critical to always wear your monitor and to always follow the safety guidelines outlined in this course..."_

The office door behind him was half-open, and Roach groaned as the lady started on another spiel about H2S. He already knew all of this shit, for fuck's sake. He didn't need to review any of this nonsense.

Roach sniffed the air and scowled, nose wrinkling. Someone had dropped a monster fart in the hallway, and it just smelled terrible, like they'd been eating nothing but eggs-

Wait, hold on. Wasn't that-

And then the little H2S monitor on his waist started going absolutely apeshit.

Roach bolted to his feet, panicking. Oh god. Oh god. What was he supposed to do? Muster point?! The lady in the video was still talking, but he couldn't be fucked with that. Something- he needed to get outside, out of the office building, NOW.

Roach bolted for the door and careened into the hallway, slamming into the wall and bouncing off. The alarm on his waist was still going absolutely apeshit, and he needed to get out, needed to get OUT-

He staggered out the door and careened down the steel steps, only to find to his horror that the smell was even stronger outside.

What did the training say again!? Get upwind?!

THERE WASN'T ANY WIND-

Roach just started running for the trucks, because _actually_ fuck that noise. The parking lot was some ways from the facility, and he was just not in the mood for any of this crap. He pulled his cellphone out of his pocket- fucking, fucking fuck. Someone had to know about this. Fucking- What was that number his stupid brother had made him memorize?

He dialed it in as he ran towards the fence, panting and out of breath. His eyes were watering, the acrid gas all around him burning his nose and throat- fuck, fuck, honestly, he was so fucking fucked. And the alarm was still beeping in his pocket, and honestly, honestly, just FUCK-

The phone was ringing in his ear, and on the third ring, the voice of some disinterested bimbo connected, going _"Hello, You've reached the Government of Alberta Occupational Health And Safety 24-hour line, how may I help-"_

 _"THERE'S A FUCKIN' GAS LEAK ON MY SITE!"_ he roared, "THE H2S SHIT, YOU KNOW?! THAT SHIT?! IT'S, FUCKING, IT'S FUCKING EVERYWHERE!"

"What?" The woman's tone sharpened, "What is the nature of the leak? Where are you?"

"I- Uh- I'm-" Roach rubbed at his face, stopping in the middle of his sentence, as well as just stopping generally. Which way was the fence, again? Fuck. But the question, he needed to answer her question, "The, uh, the...Suncor. With the, uh, the flarestack?" He said, staring at the flarestack, the red-and-white tower climbing high into the sky. "Fuck, my nose- it burns-"

"A Suncor site with a flarestack? That doesn't narrow it down. How bad is the leak? Are you safe?! Get to safety immediately, what are you doing on the phone?!"

"I- bitch, calm down, I mean, fuck, I mean, um…."

"Get upwind of it!"

"There's, there's no wind-"

"Oh, god-"

Roach dropped his stupid phone, because honestly, honestly fuck all of this. He was so sick and tired of this crap, and the world was just spinning, but like, at least he couldn't smell the gas anymore? It still, like, it still burned, though, so-

Someone was walking up to him, he noted dimly as he wobbled and sunk to his knees. Someone in, like, a mask or something?

The mask-person pressed something to his face, and Roach realized dimly that it was a mask just like the person's, and that there might be air-

 _Something inside the mask latched onto his face._

It was wet and slimy and stank like a gas tank, the stench inside the mask instantly filling his mouth and nose- and then the slime inside the mask started pouring into his mouth, into his nose, down his throat, choking and clogging his airways with thick black sludge.

Roach tried to scream, but that just opened his throat wider for more of the black sludge to pour in. Air. Air. AIR. HE COULDN'T BREATHE. HE COULDN'T BREATHE-

The man in the mask standing over him watched as his former coworker writhed on the gravel in terror and panic, the man's face almost invisible behind his mask. The sludge had fogged up the inside except for a tiny slit through which his eyes, blank and empty, gleamed.

The man in the mask watched and waited as Roach's convulsions slowed, and then, finally, stopped. The man's breathing stopped, too- one shaky, raggedy attempt, a last violent splutter- and then, nothing.

The only sound was the faint, frantic screeching of the woman on the other end of Roach's phone line.

Screaming for a response from the dead.

Seconds blurred past, and the phone's tinny speaker cut out as the woman hung up. In its place…nothing. Not a breath of wind, not a rustle of leaves, not a chirp of a cricket. Nothing.

Then Roach's chest stammered to life.

It inhaled the poisoned air once- and slowly sat up.

* * *

 _A/N: Oh god the OC train never stops. It's all OC's all the way down, folks. Brace yourselves._

 _If you liked it, hated it, or want me to suck on some black sludge, let me know! Leave a review, I really appreciate all the feedback I get._


	2. Chapter 1

**Chapter One**

* * *

 _On one of the many Range Roads, somewhere in Northern Alberta…_

The rental pickup truck rumbled down the remote logging road, shiny new paint job getting caked in the muddy gravel that the makeshift road was build from. The man in the driver's seat looked over at his passenger briefly as they sailed down the tree-lined road, concern evident in his eyes.

"So, uh…What…What should I call you, miss?" He said awkwardly, keeping both his eyes on the road. A moose could jump out at any moment, and he had to be ready to swerve.

The woman sitting next to him was…something else. Six feet tall, with long blonde hair and a full figure, she looked like she was more than capable of kicking anyone's ass. Her blue eyes darted over to the man in the passenger seat, thinking on his question.

"Depends. How much of a fuck do you give about decorum, Nathan?" she said, turning to look out the window.

The driver, Nathan, paused. "I don't care in the slightest."

She nodded. "Right. Well, you can call me Alberta."

That prompted a raised eyebrow. "Like…?"

She turned to look at him, reaching up to adjust her cowboy hat. It was large and white and very obvious, and in the crisp fall air this far north, utterly silly. Nathan himself was wearing a thick woolen toque his mother had made him years ago, something with earflaps and cords to keep his head warm.

"Yeah. I- Yeah. I'm sure you've already figured out what I am?" Alberta said, pulling her phone out of her thick jacket and checking the time. It was early afternoon, not that anyone would know that under the thick roiling blanket of clouds, and she nodded in satisfaction. They were right on schedule.

Nathan went quiet for a few minutes, continuing to drive.

"…You're one of those people, aren't you?" he said, "The soul of the province, or something? My grandfather used to talk about some guy like that in Calgary-"

"That'd be my brother." Alberta said evenly, "And the word we like to use is 'personification', but that's a fuckin' mouthful, so whatever. I'm just Alberta."

The young man nodded, reaching up and scratching at his neck.

"So…Why would they be sending you to this site, anyway?" He said, "Me, it makes sense. I'm the safety officer for this plant, I inspected it, all that jazz. Why the hell did my supervisor make you come along, then?"

Alberta looked away in silence for just long enough that Nathan thought he was being ignored.

"…Reasons." She said finally, quietly, "Just…in case, I guess."

That was obviously some kind of deflection tactic, but Nathan wasn't in the mood to go chasing her around to try and get an answer. All that mattered was that the government of Alberta had dispatched the two of them to investigate one of the largest and most remote gas plants in the province. Far away in the northern forest, tucked inside an ocean of trees, they were sure to see the prominent red-and-white flarestack rising above the greenery any minute.

"Whatever. I just wanna get this job done so I can get home. My daughter's got a hockey game and I really can't miss it." He said with a small smile. Alberta glanced over at his jacket- smooth black material, with COACH NATHAN embroidered onto the shoulder in fiery red.

She smiled at him and nodded. "Yeah. Your kid plays hockey? What position?"

"Ah, you play too? She plays left wing."

"A winger, eh? That's what I play too. My brother actually plays left wing himself."

Nathan nodded, feeling fatherly pride swell in his breast. "She wants to play for Team Canada, actually. I'm sure she'll make it- you should see that kid handle the puck. It's like she's floating on the ice, her skates don't even touch the ground. You know what I mean?"

Alberta nodded. "Oh god yeah. I know like…thirteen people like that. Not!" She added hastily, "To say that the grace on the ice is a-dime-a-dozen. They're all freaks. Your daughter sounds like she's got a hell of a talent."

Nathan just chuckled and nodded. "I know what you mean. I'm real proud of her, anyway."

Silence reigned in the vehicle for a few minutes afterwards, the only sound the rumbling of the truck's wheels on the gravel and the sound of small pebbles bouncing off the undercarriage and bodywork.

"Hey, there's the flarestack." Alberta said, pointing ahead of her. Nathan just nodded, lifting the truck's sun visor to get a better look- and there they were, the slim contours of the column, poking out just above the sea of trees.

"You got the file?" Nathan asked abruptly, "I didn't have time to look over it. They called me at 5 AM and told me to get up to Fort Macmurray, and- yeah. Here I am."

Alberta nodded, pulling open the glove compartment and pulling out a thin manila folder. "Yeah, I got it. There's not much, just a page…you want me to read it?"

The driver nodded, brown eyes still locked on the road.

"Right…So, uh, _Received tip-off from worker at the Suncor Mildred Lake Sour Gas Processing Site indicating possible H2S safety violations including leaks and exposure of workers to unlawful levels of Hydrogen Sulfide. Suncor Inspectors dispatched to site independent of government inquiry._

 _"Assume site is contaminated with H_ _2_ _S and proceed with investigation as per the H2S Alive Safety Training Course. Inspectors are to be certified with the H_ _2_ _S Alive! Training course..._ blah blah blah, we've heard all that before." She said, sighing and slotting the paper back in the centre of the folder.

"We've got our work cut out for us, then." Nathan said with a sigh, "Suncor, eh? They sent their guys out already? Christ, we'll probably have to fend them off with a stick to do a proper survey."

Alberta just nodded stiffly, looking down at the folder. "You think they'll have shut the facility down?"

"Hopefully. I'm not qualified for shutdown procedures. You?"

"Actually, yeah. I am."

Nathan nodded, a small smile on his face. Ah, of course.

"That's why they sent you, then. What I can't get over is the fact that it's _this_ facility that's leaking gas. I mean, it's brand spanking new, nothing like that one up in the Foothills. No fatalities, no injuries, nothing. How come we're just hearing about the H2S leaks now?"

Alberta shrugged, watching as the flarestack continued to rise above the trees as they drew closer. "You got all your gear?"

"Of course. You?"

"Wouldn't dream of leaving home without it." Alberta said, tone strangely stressed. She was staring straight out the window, and closed her eyes, placing both hands on the dashboard.

Nathan raised an eyebrow. "What are you-"

"Shhh."

He shut his mouth and turned his eyes back to the road, glancing over occasionally with a look of concern and confusion on his face. It looked almost like she was meditating on something, and he had no idea what the fuck was going on. Was it something pertinent to his safety? Was there some protocol he hadn't been informed about?

Finally Alberta straightened up just as they were climbing the final hill. "Alright, the place should be empty," She said firmly, "If it's not, then…I don't know what to tell you, buddy. We might be stepping over corpses if there's trucks in the parking lot."

Nathan furrowed his eyebrows.

"Aaaaand you know this….how, exactly?"

Alberta bit her lip and fished a pack of gum from her other pocket, pulling out a minty strip and pulling the wrapper off.

"I, uh. Going back to that point where I'm a personification…?"

"Oh, good Jesus. My grandad was right, you really ARE wizards."

Alberta snorted, nearly choking on her gum.

"No, I'm not a wizard. It's, um…God I don't even know if we really have a word for it…It's like…scanning? I can 'scan' for stuff within my own- uh, within the province. My province. Not- anyone else's. And like. I can only scan for, um, people? And whether or not they're there? And it doesn't work for- for people born outside, uh, outside…"

"Outside Alberta." Nathan finished, looking a bit confused. "So you did your magic mind-scan and it turned up nothing?" he said, voice loaded with skepticism.

"Yeah. I mean, specifically, I did a scan in the area for any Albertans, and like, aside from a guy hunting ten miles that way, there's nothing up ahead, so…"

"You considered that the site might be staffed entirely by Newfies?"

Alberta snorted. "Yes, I did consider that. And yeah, that's…pretty likely. But…Look, we'll see in a minute. If there's pickup trucks in the parking lot, I'm gonna say we get all our gear on before walking up. You got SCBA?" she said, looking suddenly serious.

"Yeah, of course. You think we're actually gonna need it?"

Alberta nodded. "We'll see in a second."

The truck crested the hill, and the two occupants strained to look down at the parking lot two hundred meters away down the narrow road. The forest opened up into a large clearing, the gas plant clearly visible some distance away, surrounded by gas- but it was the gravel lot at the bottom of the hill that Nathan and Alberta cared about.

Alberta sucked in a deep breath.

"There's trucks." She said flatly, and Nathan just nodded. A row of Ford F-150's, just like the one he was driving, parked patiently at the lot. If the plant really was leaking large amounts of H2S, then there was no way the trucks would still be there. The site would have been evacuated after being shut down.

"So, either we've REALLY got a problem, or we've been had." Nathan said, huffing out a small sigh. "Well? They did say you were gonna be my supervisor for the day. What's the plan?"

Alberta was staring at the red-and-white flarestack, the top of which was strangely devoid of flaring gas for a facility that was allegedly running at peak capacity not a week earlier.

"We're taking our SCBA equipment," Alberta said, "And we're getting into our kit in the parking lot. That's how we're doing this."

Nathan nodded in agreement, rumbling his truck into the gravel lot and idling the engine to a much lower speed.

It had been raining the last few days, and Nathan frowned. There were leaves on the windshields of some of the trucks. Actually, most of the trucks. And one of them had a big splatter of bird shit on it.

"Who leaves a turd on their windshield for more than a couple hours?" he said, "Especially if they're leaving the site at the end of their shift?"

Alberta huffed out a shaky breath.

"A dead man," She said quietly, "That's who."

Nathan just nodded, pulling the truck into the farthest corner of the lot and killing the engine.

They sat in silence for a few seconds, listening to the final pops and snaps of the engine as it cooled, and Alberta nodded.

She popped open the door of the truck and stepped out onto the damp gravel, work boots crunching the soft pebbles underfoot- and instantly, her eyes went wide.

"It stinks." She said softly, taking a sniff of the air and turning back to the plant. The air smelled like the scent of rotten eggs- the sulfurous stench of H2S.

Nathan wrinkled his nose. "That's bad. Shit. We're gonna need to go in fully kitted out, aren't we?"

Alberta just nodded. "Yeah. Get your shit on. We're gonna need the masks. I gotta get in there and shut that place down. And. I." she started, and then her voice failed her. Alberta looked at the ground and scrubbed her face with her hands, spitting her gum out onto the gravel.

"-I think everyone's dead." She finished softly, "That's why the last message we got was from a week ago."

The Safety Officer said nothing in reply, and Alberta couldn't blame him. She hoped against hope that they wouldn't be walking in and finding nothing but corpses. And that the facility was actually shut down. The smell of H2S on the wind was faint; not enough to cause any real harm, and it was quite likely it had hung around for a few days. The damp, rainy weather and cloud cover overhead could have trapped the gas under a natural blanket of clouds. It certainly hadn't been very windy, which would have prevented a lethal cloud from wafting out over the northern forest.

She turned her back to the vehicle, letting Nathan open the backseat and unzip his duffel bag so he could get changed into his blue work outfit and standard safety gear. Boots, gloves, insulating layer, hard hat, SCBA gear, and of course, most importantly, the H2S monitor. He checked it- the little battery-powered device wasn't beeping, but it was showing a reading of 1.5 parts per million.

There was definitely hydrogen sulfide gas in the air; just enough to be smelled, and not at dangerous levels. Yet.

At one part per million, you could smell it. Ten parts per million was the upper limit for worker exposure. Five hundred parts per million and up? Death. Death within _minutes._

Alberta listened in silence to the rustling of fabric, taking note of a distinct lack of sound in the area. The forest was right nearby, and yet she couldn't hear so much as a woodpecker off in the distance. Not a chirp of birdsong, not a chattering of a squirrel…nothing.

The forest was…silent.

Alberta gulped.

"I'm done. Your turn." Nathan called, pulling out his Self Contained Breathing Apparatus and putting the oxygen tank on. The SCBA was a simple system also used by firefighters and anyone else in an environment where they needed their own oxygen supply. It consisted of a backpack-type harness with an oxygen tank, connected by a hose to a clear faceplate with a rubber mask on the inside. Nathan slipped the harness on and buckled it, adjusting his straps so it was comfortable, and checked the pressure gauge. His tank was full, meaning he had about two hours worth of oxygen on his back, and it looked like he was going to need it.

Nathan tried his mask on, making sure it formed a complete seal around his face, and looked around at the cloudy afternoon air through the clear plastic. The rubber facepiece hugged his mouth and nose and formed a complete, comfortable seal, and he nodded in satisfaction, pulling the mask off and turning away so Alberta could get changed into her equipment.

Alberta took off her cowboy hat and carefully rested it on the dash of their red rental pickup truck, before stripping down and getting changed into her blue work fatigues. She shrugged on her SCBA harness when she was ready, buckling it up and adjusting the straps, and of course, checking the pressure. A full tank, two hours of oxygen. Then again, she had a custom rig to accommodate her unusual size; and since it was her personal SCBA rig, why not shell out for an extra hour and a half's worth of oxygen?

When it came to air, it was always, always better to have an extra tank and not need it than need an extra tank and _not_ have it.

She clipped the facemask to her belt after checking for a complete seal, and then reached up and tied back her long blonde hair with an elastic, to conform to safety requirements. With that, Alberta plonked on her white hard hat- but there was one more thing she needed.

An old superstition of hers. A paranoia that would never ever die, to the point where she refused to enter any sour gas plant without one.

Alberta reached into her duffel bag in the back seat and pulled out a book of waterproof matches, carefully slipping the little paper book in her pocket. She checked quickly to make sure all the matches were in place before tucking them away; just in case she needed it.

She nodded to herself as soon as the matches were in place, a little talisman to keep her safe. Alberta, profit-driven as she was, had absolutely no qualms about lighting a multimillion-dollar sour gas plant ablaze if it meant protecting the people who worked there. Her people were always more important than some executive's bottom dollar.

She checked her H2S monitor, and frowned. The reading had gone up- 2 ppm. She sniffed the air again- it smelled the same. But then, the terrible thing about H2S was that it slowly removed your ability to smell it. It was only a temporary thing, but that was long enough to spell death for many an unfortunate soul.

Alberta shook her head. She had a job to do. She slammed the truck's door shut, walking around to the back of the vehicle and gesturing for Nathan to follow.

There was a simple gravel path through the grass, a small guard cabin right beside it. Strangely, the small wooden guard post was empty, and Alberta felt a small shiver down her spine as she stepped onto the damp gravel trail through the grass, towards the plant. Nathan was following a few steps behind her, both of them unsure of what they were going to find when they finally entered the facility.

The plant itself, viewed from the air, was a fairly sprawling affair. Roughly square in shape, with a chain-link fence along the perimeter, the gravel-bottomed gas plant was dotted with buildings of different heights and sizes, huge fans poking out the backs of some and massive steel pipes in woven networks laced all around it. A drilling rig was also set up- as well as processing gas from the surrounding area, they'd built their plant on top of another well, presumably the biggest one in the area. Signage was posted all along the trail warning of a buried natural gas line, as per the government's regulation; hey, the finished product had to get to market somehow, right?

As Alberta and Nathan walked up to the plant, both of them were keeping one eye on their H2S monitors. As they got closer, the concentration sharply increased- if it went above ten parts per million, they'd be at the limit for exposure.

"Shit like this shouldn't happen." Alberta said suddenly, brows furrowed, "Gas plants don't just…start leaking huge amounts of H2S into the air. It's just- that's not how they're designed. I've- I've desgined plants like this myself, for _years._ If this plant is leaking H2S, it would have been a catastrophic blowout. None of this makes any goddamn sense!"

Nathan just shrugged. "You're the expert on that. I'm just here to take air quality readings and throw the book at them if needs be…Though I still don't know why you, of all people, needed to be here. Wouldn't it make more sense to send somebody from Suncor?"

Alberta took a deep breath and turned around to look at Nathan.

"Look. The reason I'm here and not anyone else is, well, that worker tip-off came in a full week ago. And, well…" Alberta looked at the ground guiltily, then looked back up, "If something really did happen in there, and something happens to you, then, well, I'll be able to tell the tale to whoever needs to hear it. And, this is a brand new plant in a newly-discovered oilfield, so...I need to know what went wrong myself-"

"You requested this job, didn't you?" Nathan said, raising an eyebrow.

"Yes." Alberta said flatly.

Silence. Not even the wind rustling through the grass. There was no wind. There wasn't even the buzzing of insects.

"Let's keep going." Nathan said finally, choosing not to comment and instead pulling a notebook and pencil from his pocket. He wrote down the H2S concentration and an estimate of how far they were from the building and snapped it shut again.

"I tell you, Suncor's REALLY getting the book thrown at them for this one, and no mistake. No matter what happened, this concentration of H2S this far from the plant is grounds for criminal negligence."

Alberta just nodded and kept walking, pulling out her phone and checking to see if there was any service. Three bars- the plant obviously had a transmitter. She took a picture, first of the gas plant and then of her H2S monitor and texted them both to the regulator who'd assigned her to Nathan in the first place- a nice woman in an office in Edmonton, far, far away from this nonsense.

She put the device away, not waiting for the reply- it didn't matter. She was here for two reasons- to shut the plant down if needs be, and to gather any evidence in case the worst had happened.

They kept walking in silence, Nathan occasionally pausing to make note of the readings from his H2S monitor, which kept steadily increasing as they got closer and closer to the plant. Alberta felt a sinking feeling in her stomach, and a cold tightness in her chest- any second now, any minute now, they'd step over the threshold, from 10ppm to 15 ppm-

 ** _BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP_**

The insistent ringing of two alarms going off in unison was nearly enough to scare the two out of their skins. Alberta jumped at the sound and checked her monitor- 15 ppm.

"Masks." She gasped, taking off her hard hat and quickly pressing hers to her face. She purged the air that was already in the mask and took a deep breath, oxygen from her tank filling her lungs. There. With a proper air supply, she fumbled the straps on, then bent down to puck up her hard hat, jamming it back on.

First rule of H2S safety: Look out for number one.

Nathan had followed suit, she was relieved to find, and the two of them were staring at each other through the plastic screens of their face masks. Nathan's oxygen tanks were just as big as hers, which, good. She had no idea how long it would take to shut down a plant this size, let alone all by herself, but hopefully a brand new facility such as this would be automated to a degree that would make it possible for her to cap the lines and shut down the machines all by herself.

In the meantime, though, the first order of business was shutting her alarm up. Alberta pressed a sequence of buttons and held them for five seconds, resetting the slim monitor to a setting where it would only go off at concentrations 500ppm and above.

The only problem with those alarms is that they were very, very loud.

Alberta kept walking, feeling a strange sensation like she was being watched. The plant was right nearby, and-

Hold on, was the main gate hanging open?

It sure looked like it. The main gate for the workers to enter and leave the facility was hanging open, and Alberta gulped. That wasn't supposed to happen, ever. This far north, curious bears were enough of a problem that leaving those gates unlocked was a huge concern.

They approached the gates and stepped inside, and Alberta could have sworn she saw movement out of the corner of her eye. She grabbed Nathan by the shoulder and pointed to where it was, but-

Nothing. Just a shiny metal pipe next to a dozen others, full to the brim with natural gas in a certain stage of the production cycle. The whole facility was a maze of pipes just like it, stacked on top of each other and all fed into this machine or that machine or whatever else.

"I don't see anything," Nathan said, voice severely muffled so he had to repeat himself. The masks were going to make talking impossible, but taking them off…

Alberta checked her monitor.

250 ppm within the gates.

The masks were all that stood between them and death.

Alberta gestured at Nathan's notebook in his breast pocket, and he offered it to her, along with his pen. She flipped to the back of the slim volume and wrote a small note in her blocky, all-caps handwriting:

WE HAVE TWO HOURS. LET'S GET GOING. I NEED TO FIND THE MAIN CONTROL ROOM.

* * *

 _A/N:_

 _I feel like I should mention the fact that this story is something highly personal to me. Aside from being some Halloween stuff for the spooks: my parents have both visited sour gas sites like the one in the story hundreds of times. it's very safe, but there's always a risk._

 _The paranoia I felt as a child, the worry and fear that I would lose my dad to H2S...that is why I wrote this fic. My family has been endangered by this stuff. Nothing bad ever happened, but. It could. It always could._

 _Regardless, this'll be a shorter story than usual. If you liked it, leave a review! Comments are very much appreciated._


	3. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

* * *

Alberta's work boots crunched on the gravel as she strode forwards confidently, Nathan following along behind her. Communication was…going to be next to impossible. Shouting through the thick rubber of their masks was unwieldy and if Alberta needed his help for something specific, well.

Fuck.

Odds were pretty good she was going to make an enemy out of Suncor after this, though. Companies generally didn't like it when some bitch in a cowboy hat rocked up to their multimillion-dollar facility and slammed the big red button to shut the fucker down. She was honestly surprised that it was still running; most new facilities would automatically shut off if they detected an H2S leak. Leave it to Suncor or whatever contractor they had used to fuck up the simplest of tasks, though.

Shutting down the plant would completely tank production until someone could come in to do the lengthy restart process, which, considering that a startup could take hours or even days, well.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars could be lost for every day the plant sat idle, and Alberta didn't give a single fuck.

She marched towards a building that looked like the on-site office. The look was fairly distinctive- prefab housing with plain tan siding, and a row of high-efficiency solar panels on the roof. Alberta marched towards it, keeping an eye out for anything that looked even remotely like a person, because…well, the trucks were still in the lot. There was no way the workers would have all been crazy enough to run off into the Canadian wilderness without guns or canned food or a fucking tent. People who did that shit died, plain and simple.

The door to the office was slightly raised off the ground, and the people who had built the gas plant had helpfully constructed a set of rough wooden steps up towards it. To Alberta's surprise, the lights were still on; she could see it through the windows, and more jarringly, through the open door.

Alberta turned around to look at Nathan. The human was busy checking the pressure in his oxygen supply lines, which meant he wasn't paying any attention to the giant steel pipes he was walking underneath.

And to be fair, neither had she.

A single black drop of something fell from the smallest crack in a pipe overhead and fell towards the earth, gravity distending it from a teardrop to a sphere.

It hit Nathan's right hand with a _plip,_ and he looked up and scowled.

 **"S'fuckin' leaking!"** He shouted through his mask, trying to rub that black shit off his hand by wiping it off on his jeans. No such luck; the tarry black sludge seemed to have the staining power of paint. Fuck.

Nathan kept rubbing, pulling his H2S monitor off his waist to check and see if he could maybe slip his mask off for long enough to spit on the back of his hand or something. Whatever this shit was, it couldn't be allowed to stay on his person; who knew what kind of caustic chemical it was.

No such luck. 700 ppm. Way, Way, WAY above the threshold for death and permanent injury. He was just going to have to live with cancer ten years down the line. Or maybe just find a sink.

Alberta watched him do his little Something-Just-Leaked-On-Me shimmy-sham, and immediately her eyebrows flew up behind her mask. Boots crunched across the gravel in a flurry as she ran towards her human compatriot, and in a flash she grabbed his hand and looked at it, then immediately looked up.

A drop of black liquid hit the visor of her mask with a _plip._

Alberta watched as the tarry black stuff slowly oozed down the plastic of her faceplate, and immediately she pulled Nathan away from those pipes.

Natural gas, in the form it usually took in pipes and cars and homes, was NOT black, OR viscous. Or remotely anything like tar. It was a clear-yellowish fluid that flowed like water and felt slightly slippery to the touch. None of that was consistent with the fluid currently congealing on the plastic rim of her faceplate.

The liquid on Nathan's hand, to her horror, had vanished; like it had been absorbed straight into his skin. It looked like some of the smallest veins in his hand had suddenly been injected with black dye, turning them into a faint, creeping web that from a distance looked like a bruise.

Alberta shuddered and grabbed the human by the wrist, pulling him towards the office. She needed to wash this shit off her face mask and- just, get this god damned facility shut the fuck down, come hell or high water. Nathan was going to need medical attention as soon as humanly possible, and they were already several hours from civilization.

And god knew how many hours from the nearest hospital. Would a helicopter even be able to fly in this weather? Would it even be able to pick them up in a cloud of H2S?

She had to get this plant shut down first. The main reason to find the office was to find the keys to the control room, as well as figure out where the fuck the control room actually was; Alberta had never been on this site before and the control room was generally not all that easy to find. That was her entire reason to be here. She had to do that before she could evacuate.

She pulled Nathan inside the office and looked around, immediately dragging him towards the only washroom and shoving him through the door. The man looked back and had an expression of confusion on his face until Alberta mimed washing her hand off, stabbing her finger at the sink- what, did this fucking guy want that gunk to stay on his arm?

The sound of running water filled the hall, which, again, what the fuck. The office had power and water, a week after everyone had…after the last known contact from this place?

Whatever. She needed to shut this place down, NOW.

Alberta barged her way into the site manager's office, leaning in and looking around for any kind of map to the main control room. The office computer screens were black but the terminal was still whirring away in its rack under the desk; whoever had been in this office an entire fucking week ago hadn't shut it down, and for some reason, the computer wasn't set up to power itself off.

Alberta walked over and shook the mouse, watching and waiting. The computer flashed to life, the screen showing a paused frame of the same bog-standard H2S training video she herself had seen countless times before.

What the actual fuck. The irony of this was actually honestly painful. She checked her H2S monitor-

433 ppm. The air in here was still lethal but much lower than outside. Small fucking wonder, though; the goddamn door was open.

Alberta stood up from the computer, just glad that it hadn't turned itself off. She looked all around the room, eyes falling on a map of the facility that had been laminated and pinned to the wall, right next to a whiteboard. Different areas of the plant were circled in different colours, corresponding to a team number on the whiteboard; a maintenance schedule.

Fuckin' ace.

As Alberta continued to look at the board, Nathan was still busy trying to wash the gunk off his hand. He was having no luck; the black goo seemed to have sunk into his skin all the way. Strangely, though, he wasn't as worried about that as he probably should have been; on the whole, he felt just fine.

Why was he even bothering to wash his hands, anyway? 

The man stepped away from the sink, flicking the residual water off his hands. He grabbed a paper towel off the dispenser and walked away from the lone urinal and stall, back into the office proper. Alberta was in the office, and a thought occurred to Nathan.

He flung his paper towel away and walked into the messy office silently, barely paying any mind to the reams of paper scattered all over the place. Instead he walked up behind his partner and tapped her on the shoulder.

Alberta jumped in fright, spinning around with her hands already balled into fists to defend herself. When she saw it was only him, she dropped her guard-

And then Nathan reached up and wiped the black gunk off her visor.

With his bare, ungloved hand.

"WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?!" Alberta shouted through her mask, eyes narrowing at him as she lunged forward and grabbed his wrist, "WE DON'T KNOW WHAT THAT IS! **_DON'T TOUCH SHIT!"_**

Nathan, for his part, simply shrugged helplessly, muttering something behind his mask and wiping what little gunk was still on the surface of his skin onto his jeans. The stuff absorbed a lot quicker now, and he still wasn't terribly concerned about it. In fact-

Alberta probably needed to touch some of the gunk too, come to think of it. That was a good idea.

Alberta just threw her hands up and turned back to the laminated poster. She needed to get this guy to a hospital, and then a shrink, in that exact order and as soon as humanly possible. Who the fuck watches an oily black substance from a goddamn gas plant pipe permeate through their skin and then goes and _deliberately touches some more of it?_

Still, she now had a pretty good idea where the main control room was. It was located right near the primary flarestack, if you could believe it, and that meant they had only a short hike to get over there.

The other thing this plant had, Alberta noted, was a tower for pumping gas out of a subsurface well. A poster on the wall adjacent showed a cross-section of the land with a stamp from a geological company; showing a fairly large pocket of natural gas directly underneath the facility. Well, fair enough.

Nathan was still standing there like a strange, dopey statue, and he was staring at his fingertips- the same ones he'd used to wipe the mystery gunk off her faceplate. She needed to get a sample of that shit in a test tube and take it to a lab someplace with the proper equipment to figure out what the fuck was in it. So Nathan would know how many kinds of cancer he was expected to get, that kind of thing.

She grabbed him by the non-gunk wrist and dragged him out of the office, making a mental note to actually sue Suncor herself, personally, with her actual lawyer, for this one. Black gunk that made people stupid? Really, guys?

Nathan let her drag him along, a small smile spreading itself on his face beneath the rubber mask.

She stomped down the steps with a determined expression, stalking across the tan gravel with a sense of purpose in her stride. Alberta was taking a somewhat circuitous route to the flarestack; the most direct way involved walking under some pipes, and, well. If one pipe was leaking unknown shit, there was probably more.

Out of the corner of her eye, Alberta could have sworn she saw movement. Something tall and black shifting slowly by- well, by the drilling towers, actually. She stopped dead in her tracks and whipped her head to look-

Nothing. Just- pipes. Pipes that lay ominously silent, and probably leaking black ooze onto the gravel below.

Alberta shuddered and kept pulling Nathan towards the control room.

The main control hub was a similar building to the office, except it was elevated slightly on a steel platform, meaning the staircase was a big longer. God only knew why; that could only increase the chances of someone tripping if they needed to run away in a hurry. A steel pipe emerged from one of the walls; no doubt full to the brim with control cables.

When she got to the base of the steps, she noticed something weird. Black droplets that looked like they'd dried onto the wood, a trail of them leading up the steps. Like someone had been carrying a leaking black paint a week ago.

Whatever. It wasn't important.

Alberta lead Nathan up the steps, taking a glance back at her human companion. He was tripping on each step- she was practically dragging him, and he was just- staring. Staring straight at the drilling rig.

Where she'd seen movement earlier.

Alberta shivered. If that black gunk was taking a competent safety officer and turning him into an uncoordinated mess, it was probable he had nerve damage. He might lose that hand. She shivered. She really hoped they wouldn't have to amputate.

She practically dragged Nathan up the last two and leaned him up against the wooden railing, reaching out for the doorknob. And it was, naturally, locked. As Alberta suspected it would be. She swore under her breath and closed her eyes, bracing herself against the doorframe.

Channelling all her strength into an explosive burst of power wasn't easy for a province to do. It was almost as much a matter of meditation as it was muscles, and some (like Quebec) never got the hang of it. It was reaching outside one's self, and yet inside one's self, to borrow the might of their people for a singular task.

Alberta focused on the souls of her people, and then on their heartbeats, a cacophony of noise, three million strong. She felt their might surge into her arms for just a moment, and she shoved on the door with all their collective strength. Three million souls joined as one; and the cheap deadbolt lock snapped like a matchstick with a loud CLANG.

When Alberta opened her eyes again, she found that she'd actually managed to bend the door slightly with her strength. The lock was snapped off, and the door swung loosely over the entrance to a gaping black maw.

She stopped and staggered over to the railing, leaning on it in exhaustion for a moment and taking a few deep breaths. Pooling might like that wasn't easy, and it wasn't something a non-nation could sustain for very long. Momentary bursts of power, that was it.

She stood up again, turning around-

Nathan was gone.

Alberta whipped her head around frantically, looking all around for him. He'd just- he'd just up and walked away.

He wasn't suffering from H2S exposure. She'd know. Clumsiness was one thing, but he'd been walking and standing just fine. He'd have slumped over himself on the railing if it was H2S.

She checked her meter.

557 ppm by the control room.

Still lethal.

She had to find him. She couldn't leave him behind. But-

The plant. She had to hit the Emergency ShutDown button. The ESD.

Alberta leaped into the control room, blinking in the darkness. It was pitch-black in there, and she couldn't see a goddamn thing. The control room had no power.

Which meant-

She pulled her phone out of her pocket and unlocked it, pulling up the flashlight icon and tapping on it.

Under the flashlight's glare, she could see the rows of instrument panels and the darkened LED displays inset into a dedicated panel all along the wall. Several wheelie chairs were knocked over or pushed aside, like the occupants had all suddenly left in a hurry.

Alberta felt a funny feeling of ice-cold dread in her chest.

The row of dead monitors could only mean one thing.

The flashlight's beam fell on a bright red button, the size of a man's thumb. It was inset into its own small panel, and it had a small Plexiglas cover over the top.

The cover was flipped aside, and the button was pushed down.

 **The gas plant had been dead** ** _the entire time._**

Alberta backed out of the control room frantically, practically tripping over her own boots. She ran down the wooden stairs, heart cantering, and out onto the gravel.

"NATHAN?! NATHAAAAAAN! HUMAN, **_WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU?!"_** she screamed through her mask, spinning in desperate circles, looking for movement, movement wherever the fuck it could possibly be. He couldn't have gone far and they NEEDED to get the FUCK out of there.

She saw something move over by the wellhead, and without a second thought, Alberta booked it straight for the one living thing in this shiny steel tomb. Everything was dead. The birds. The bees. The plant itself, laying inert like some vast, decaying monster.

The moving thing was tall and upright. It was clearly a human.

Alberta ran towards it, heedless, underneath a bank of steel pipes-

A drop of something hit her shoulder. Without thinking, she reached up to brush it off.

It took her two more massive strides to connect the dots. She skidded to a stop, tan gravel substrate digging in under her heels, and slowly turned her right hand to look at the fingers.

A black, tarry stain was spread across her skin, slowly vanishing as it sunk in.

"Oh god no." She whispered quietly into her mask.

The sound of crunching boots alerted Alberta, and she looked up- and immediately tripped over her own feet trying to scramble backwards.

Someone was walking towards her. Someone in a hard hat and boots and SCBA mask and blue uniform.

Someone who **_was not Nathan._**

She scrambled to her feet as the masked man got closer and closer, and without warning, her H2S monitor went _completely_ _ **APESHIT.**_

The second setting, the one they'd switched it to, was for concentrations of H2S above 1000 ppm. She turned around, backing a few more feet away, and got a good, long look at the masked figure.

 _Roach_ read the embroidered nametag on his uniform, and the inside of his mask, the clear screen, was coated with the same tarry black sludge.

The vent covers on the side of the mask had been torn off, and she could see the rubber flaps that kept debris out flapping with the man's every breath.

But the most horrifying thing was the cord. It hung from the underside of the mask to somewhere around the man's navel, a cord for an oxygen line that had clearly been cut deliberately. It was leaking a steady drip, drip, drip of the same tarry sludge, a slow trail of droplets forming on the gravel at the man's feet.

He was _breathing_ _ **hydrogen sulfide**_ _._

* * *

 _A/N:_

 _Hey, you. Guest commenter that's been following this and West Wind and everything else. I really appreciate you and what you're doing; seriously, dude, make an account on this godforsaken site so I can actually PM you because you're cool._

 _Aside from that, not much to say, really, aside from the fact that I had to call my dad to ask about how a gas plant gets shut down in an emergency because the internet is NOT HELPFUL. So now he's majorly confused, and I couldn't exactly tell him "It's for a fanfic, bro!" because…reasons. But hey, whatever._

 _As always, leave a comment if you liked it! Reviews are always hugely appreciated._


	4. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three**

* * *

Nathan heard a faint, muffled noise, like feet running frantically on gravel somewhere not too far away. But that was okay. Everything was okay.

He was safe now. He felt safe and peaceful as he stumbled the last few steps towards the tower. The beautiful, gleaming tower.

Nestled inside the tower was…something wonderful. Something that would let him live forever. He would be immortal, just like IT. Immortal and unchanging. His body would never decay. And all he needed to do in return was _breathe._

One of the others walked up to him, slowly and sluggishly. They had an upturned hard hat in their hands and carried it towards Nathan with a surprising amount of care for someone whose movements were so stilted.

Sloshing around in the upturned helmet was a thick black slurry, and Nathan knew exactly what he needed to do with IT.

He reached up with one hand and undid the straps on his mask. Slowly, oh so slowly, holding the mask in place with his free hand. He needed to receive the blessing. Needed IT. Needed IT, wanted IT, craved IT; and soon he would be free of all his worries and cares and pains, soon he would be free of _oxygen,_ dread demon oxygen that wore at his body and burned at his flesh, that eroded his life with every breath. Every human who lived breathed oxygen, and every breath of oxygen brought them closer to the grave, didn't it? Of course it did. Of course it would.

He was going to live forever.

IT promised him that he would live forever.

The hard hat was full of slopping black liquid, and Nathan could feel ITs voice singing in his blood. He knew exactly what he needed to do, but pulling it off would be a bit of a juggle.

All around him, others were surging forwards, heading towards the control room, the generator, and all the other parts of the facility. The door to the control room was open; She'd done them that kindness. And now, now they could switch the machinery back on and let IT spread ITself through the pipelines. Let it grow and consume the petroleum in the tubing, let it…

Nathan was getting distracted. The helmet was in front of him.

He took one last deep breath of the air in his mask, and pulled it off his face, holding his breath as he lunged forwards and submerged his face and nose in the black slime.

Nathan opened his mouth and breathed in.

* * *

Alberta ran.

She ran for the fence, desperate to get the fuck out of there. She just needed to- get out. To get into her truck and run the fuck away. Get in, put her foot down, and-

Why are you running away from us, Alberta?

The province dug her heels into the gravel, skidding to a stop and reaching up to clutch at her head. It wasn't so much a voice in her mind saying defined words; it was just…the concept. The idea of the sentence, flowing into her mind like a river of sensation. The concept of the question.

Why the fuck was she running away? Because, uh, because the place was full up on H2S. Because…it was that or stay here and die. Because the black sludge was INSIDE HER BODY and she needed to- to get it out. Get it out before it killed-

If you leave this place, you will suffocate. 

"WHAT?!" Alberta said aloud into the rubber of her respirator, well and truly confused. What the fuck was that supposed to mean?! It- the idea of being unable to breathe, in a normal atmosphere…?!

 _Where the fuck were these thoughts coming from?!_

You are one of my children now, the swirling thoughts continued, and I take care of my children. You have been most helpful. We lost the key, and we never would have gotten that door open were it not for you.

"What the fuck. _What the fuck._ What the fuck do you want?! WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU?! MY MIND- **_GET OUT OF MY FUCKING MIND!"_**

Alberta screamed, sinking her nails into her scalp and turning back towards the fence. To hell with it. To hell with it all. To hell with the whole goddamn world-

You don't understand. That's alright. I take care of my children. I will show you what will happen soon.

Alberta gasped as a vision flooded her mind. A patchwork of images, culled from the imaginations of a dozen people and haphazardly pasted together by something...something external. It flooded into her mind's eye, filling her thoughts and clouding her judgement.

 _Hundreds of people shambling through the streets. Black slurry leaking from their mouths, leaking from their noses, dripping out of their eyes like a trail of inky tears. Every breath expelled a cloud of gas, a cloud of gas that grew greater and greater, swelling and covering the landscape around them. The mob shambled on down every street. In every city. Everywhere. The stench of rotten eggs filled the air, and any animal that drew too close to the silent swarm fell, dead in seconds from the oppressive fog of hydrogen sulfide. The plants withered and died. The birds fell from the air and hit the ground, dead before impact._

 _The drops of slurry that fell from their mouths, from their hands and feet and faces, every drop of sludge coated the ground, growing with their passing into a blanket of inky black biomass. IT swelled and grew, swallowing up abandoned cars and climbing the sides of buildings like a tarry black slime mold. IT spread and spread and spread, swallowing anything, alive or dead, with the molecules it needed to sustain itself. The dead animals and plants were mere fuel for ITs growth as it crawled across the land, spreading and spreading. Every plant, every leaf, every animal, everything that lived on earth without lungs was of no use to IT; save for as fuel for ITs endless expansion ever outwards._

 _Hydrogen and sulfur IT pulled from the cloud its shambling herd produced, using that to feed its explosive growth, breathing in great gasps of the wonderous gas from the atmosphere they had made just for IT. The sunlight enriched IT, pumped IT full of energy, and IT grew and IT spread and IT sang for joy in the minds of ITs human herd..._

Alberta snapped out of her unwanted reverie with a scream of terror.

IT was inside her. The black tar was _inside her._

She was going to become like- like- like them. If she let even another drop touch her skin. The gas was going to choke her to death. She was going to end up as just- just another drone for this, this...slime. producing it the H2S it needed to survive-

 **"No."** Alberta snarled, rubber mask muffling her voice. She turned around, back to the gate, and dug her fingernails into her head. Unbeknownst to her, the blackish smudge on the back of her hand had darkened.

No. **She wasn't going to just meekly sit back and let it happen like a good little girl**. That wasn't fucking happening.

She glanced up- the workers were shambling around, towards the control room and some of the other equipment. And Alberta instantly knew what ITs plan was. She knew how the oil and gas industry worked. And she knew exactly what it was trying to do.

She'd, unwittingly, opened the door to the control room. She'd given IT access to everything it needed to restart the plant.

The gas plant being offline meant that the pipeline connecting it to the network was closed. No gas was leaving the plant. No gas was travelling to market.

Which meant that IT was effectively trapped.

But if they started the plant again…

IT could spread. Through the pipeline. To bigger, and bigger refineries. IT could travel to market. IT could infect hundreds, then thousands, then millions.

The gas in those pipes was exported all across the continent. Millions of people used that fuel. And if so much as one drop got on the skin-

No.

No, no, no, a thousand times no.

Alberta pulled her phone out of her pocket and unlocked it.

What are you doing, my child? Why are you resisting me? I can make all your problems go away…

"Yeah. By eating my fuckin' brains…" Alberta muttered to herself, reaching up to clutch at her head with one hand. She had the beginnings of a headache, and for some reason, the fingers on that hand felt a bit stiff, a bit numb.

Her good hand unlocked her phone and scrolled into her contacts, scrolling down until she found a particular name she knew quite well.

Sarita Sharma. Executive Manager of the Alberta Government's safety inspectors. Alberta had been on the panel that had selected her. The woman had the patience of a saint, that much was certain. But more importantly, the ability to shit-can all drilling in this area forever. She needed to get this information to the government, to SOMEONE in some position of authority.

The first thing Alberta did was pop open her messages, reaching her other hand down to try and stabilize her phone. The hand felt…unpleasant. Pins and needles went shooting up her arm when she slowly closed her fingers, and Alberta drew in a breath through clenched teeth.

But nevertheless, she started typing a message. And then quickly thought better of it. No. There wasn't time for pleasantries.

 **AB: Sorry**

 **AB: Mildred Lake Sour Gas Processing Facility**

 **AB: Suncor site**

There.

She tapped a button to share her location, and watched nervously as the little bubbles did their thing, sloooooowly loading itself into place.

And then it slammed into her like a tidal wave. Alberta made a strangled noise into her respirator, falling to her knees as a tidal wave of _thought_ slammed into her mind.

Jumbled and garbled babble from the swirling minds of dozens slammed into her thoughts, carrying her away on a wave of pure, unadulterated _noise._ And the topic of the babble seemed to veer all over hell's half-acre as dozens of male voices chattered and babbled away in her mind.

Help us, Alberta, they said over and over and over again, help us with our task…

"FINE!" she screamed into her mask in desperation, "FINE, FINE, FUCK- STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT **_PLEASE GOD HELP ME-"_**

And just as suddenly as the hurricane of babble had started, it stopped. Like IT had simply flipped a switch and silenced all its stolen tongues.

Alberta fell to her knees, mind racing.

You will help us start the plant. And in return, I will let you keep your mind. For now. Do you agree?

"Oh, **fuck you.** Fine. Fine, I fucking accept your fucking terms. On the sole condition that you GET THE **FUCK** _OUT OF MY MIND!"_

I will see what I can do. Now, if you wouldn't mind, my less rude and disobedient children are by the control room, having some difficulties. Run along now, I don't like to be kept waiting.

"Fuck, I'm going, I'm going…" Alberta muttered, glancing down at her phone screen. She knelt down to pick it up- and despite everything, grinned into the black rubber.

Her location had sent to the Executive Manager- and that wasn't all.

 **SSharma:** **Is there some kind of an incident? Please send me pictures. Is it serious?**

Alberta picked up the pace as she walked towards the control room, mind racing. She tapped out a quick reply, a plan already forming in her mind.

 **AB: yes theres incident**

 **AB: will send pics and vids when i can**

 **AB: whole oilfield needs to be condemned dont let anyone drill here anymore do u understand me**

She didn't wait for the reply; just opened up the camera app, flipped to video, and tapped the button to start recording, all while still walking towards the control room.

Alberta's heart sank when she saw the slowly-growing puddle of black sludge that coated the gravel at the feet of the four or five ex-humans shambling around by the steps at the entrance. They were producing the slime just as much as they were producing the H2S- and Nathan was among them now. There was no way he wasn't.

If she so much as got another drop on her skin-

Alberta shuddered.

If she fucked this up now, it was game over. For **everyone.**

* * *

 _A/N: With apologies to anyone reading this: real life intervened and made it impossible to justify writing up huge slabs of text. Actually I only took a short break to polish this chapter off- I have to get straight back to studying for a biology exam tomorrow as soon as this is posted. So sorry for the five-day gap!_

 _Oh, and do you like the new cover picture? I drew it myself like the one for West Wind. Hopefully it doesn't look too terrible. And yes, I know H2S isn't yellow; shh. it's ~Art~._

 _Regardless, here's hoping you like the twists and turns that this story is taking as it grows. It's almost done, this being intended for a short length with maximum impact._

 _As always, leave a review if you liked it, hated it, or want me to go and chug some black tar myself!_


	5. Chapter 4

**Chapter Four**

* * *

Alberta was shaking. Her hands were shaking as she walked towards the control room, approaching the "Zombies" carefully. She had her cellphone raised up, eyes constantly flicking over to the recording on the tiny screen. Yes, it was still rolling. This was- this was going to create problems. She needed to send that video file off to the Executive Manager of safety, get this shit couriered to the boardroom of all the people who could get this entire area condemned for drilling, forever.

A thought occurred to Alberta, and she grabbed the small battery-powered monitor off her waist, showing the readout to the camera. The closer she got to the ex-workers, the higher it read; and it was currently showing 666 ppm.

666\. Really. Fuck her entire life, honestly. Superstition was usually stupid, but just this once, Alberta was willing to make an exception.

You know that it won't do anything, the voice in her mind sang sweetly, Why are you insisting on recording this? 

"I wanna know how the fuck something that's been in the _ground_ since the _Devonian_ knows what the fuck a camera phone is, much less what the fuck I'm up to!" Alberta snapped in reply, eyeing up the black sludge dripping from the masks of the workers.

One of them reached up without warning and clumsily started to tug at his mask. Alberta stopped and watched, carefully zooming in the camera on the action; if he (it?) was actually taking that mask off, she needed to record whatever the fuck was underneath.

You seem to forget…the human brain stores information in a physical fashion, using chemical signals. Any human body I bless, I can access the memories of their brain. My children have taught me many things. I spent the last week learning of all the wonders of the world and all that has changed since I was last awake.

"Yeah, well, what the fuck ARE you?" Alberta snapped back, almost conversationally; her eyes were still locked on the worker trying to free his face from the confines of his SCBA mask, with minimal success. She was half-tempted to try and help him, but, well, that would involve having to get close to the fucking plague vector, and no fucking thanks, man.

The answer to Alberta's question wasn't something she could fully comprehend. It was a tangled mess of thought, like all the others, but the meaning of this one was…alien. It was impossible to straighten it out; and dimly, she realized why. The other thoughts, the other replies…IT was pilfering from the brains of the people IT had turned to ITs side, the people IT had infected. This…was a thought directly from ITs mind, a consciousness that had been trapped under the earth for hundreds of millions of years.

IT was…incomprehensible. So alien, so divorced from what Alberta was used to, as to be almost…an error in the source code of life. IT said…something about ancient life. Life so ancient that the line between plant and animal was blurred, and that life grew outward in fractal patterns, feeding as IT grew. Life that was soft-bodied, life without colour or shape or eyes. Then…darkness and earth. Emerging? Emerging later? Animals touching ITs corpulence. And on IT went, a cycle of something so unimaginably ancient and vast…and it could sleep as long as it had biomass in some form to feed upon.

It was honestly a shock to Alberta's system when the worker finally managed to free his face from the mask, snapping her out of her daze and riveting her attention half to her phone screen and half to the guy's fucking _face._

He was crying black. The mask tumbled from his fingers and Alberta didn't _care_ because **_he was crying tears of black sludge._**

The blood vessels in his eyes weren't tainted red; they were black. The liquid dripping from his nose wasn't snot; it was black. The gunk spilling from his lips wasn't spit, it was **black, inky tar, blacker than coal, blacker than the dead of night.**

He breathed out- and Alberta's alarm _beeped._

She pulled it off her waist in full view of the camera- the air near this guy had just spiked from 600 ppm to 1006 ppm.

Alberta's hands were shaking.

1000 ppm was enough to kill you with a single breath. If you inhaled a lungful, you would be unconscious before you hit the fucking floor.

And then, what had once been a human being, what had once been a worker, **_lunged at her._**

Alberta screeched and jumped out of the way, booking it up the steps away from all of them. She almost slipped on the black sludge on the bottom step, barely managing to catch herself on the handrail. The wooden steps were coated with sludge, coated with slime, and if she'd stopped her fall with her arms-

No. No, no, no, no, that wasn't happening, just, MOVE, just GET INTO THAT CONTROL ROOM-

IT was clearly sending a message, that message being _quit stalling and do your job._

Yeah. Her job as one of the cogs in ITs plan.

Alberta had a death grip on her phone as she scrambled up the wooden steps, stumbling into the control room and spinning around. The control room was empty, thank god for small mercies, but the infected workers were stumbling up the stairs after her-

She spun around in the light from outside, eyes locking onto a large metal filing cabinet. Alberta lunged for it, grabbing it with both hands and dragging it over to the door. She tossed it on its side with a crash, papers splashing from the impact every which way, and slammed the door closed, holding it shut with both hands and frantically kicking the cabinet into place-

No sooner had she managed to put her impromptu barrier into place than something outside started pounding on the door, and Alberta swallowed. She realized dimly that she was still recording on her phone, and she needed her flashlight to see. Trembling fingers killed the recording and pulled up the option for her flashlight, flashing it around the room. two more filing cabinets and a cupboard. A couple of spare chairs. She threw as much of it as she could on the pile, finally taking a step away from her impromptu barricade and letting out a single, shaky breath.

The pounding on the door stopped.

She was safe. For the moment.

Why won't you let my children confer their blessings on you? You know that you cannot survive outside of this place. You've been touched by me; you are a part of us now.

"Look, fucker, if you want me to get this plant started again- and I know you do- you're going to shut the fuck up and let me do my god damned job." Alberta snapped, hatred radiating off her words. IT needed to shut the fuck up and die.

The control room was split into two; a small antechamber where she was currently standing with all the filing cabinets and the coffee machine and whatnot, and the larger room with the control panel and the main screens. Illuminated by her phone's wimpy flashlight was the lightswitch on the far wall, and Alberta reached for it, hands shaking.

She flipped it, and breathed a sigh of relief when the lights came on, and switched off her phone's flashlight to conserve the battery.

There was no way IT would leave her thoughts unmolested for as long as she needed it to. Not unless she actually knuckled down and did ITs bidding. To an extent. Sure, she'd get the plant going again. And then...

Alberta was honestly afraid of finishing her own thoughts. IT was listening. IT could hear her thoughts. And-

"Fuck me. Just, fuck-" she growled, stepping into the control room and taking a seat on one of the few spinny chairs that hadn't been knocked over.

Good. You see how easy it is when you co-operate with us?

"I said, and I was pretty clear about this, **SHUT UP.** I want to restart this gas plant about as much as I want to eat my own tits and fuck a cactus. I'm doing this so you'll SHUT THE FUCK UP! GET OUT OF MY THOUGHTS, GET OUT OF MY HEAD, AND **_LEAVE ME ALONE!"_**

Silence. Silence for five seconds, and then ten seconds, and Alberta slumped in her chair.

She wasn't so stupid to think that IT had actually listened. IT was still in the back of her mind, listening to all her thoughts. IT just wasn't saying anything, and that was good enough for her.

Alberta put her phone down, relieved that it was still working, and tapped on her text messages. They were sorted so the most recent conversation was at the top, and that meant the EM of safety.

She tapped the little icon to send photos and videos and quickly tapped the video. Fuck, it was like four minutes long- that would take _forever_ to send, especially through the plant's shitty cell tower.

Better to start sending it now, then. She'd have time to work on getting the plant going again for IT while the video sent. She tapped the icon to get the file going on its way, and then turned her attention back to the control panel.

There was a button in the top corner of the panel with a little decal showing the on-off icon, and Alberta jabbed her thumb at it. The panel slowly flickered to life, all the digital dials and gauges coming online, and she let out a deep breath she didn't realize she'd been holding.

Wait. **_Breath._**

Alberta frantically grabbed at the gauge clipped to her shoulder, looking at the little dial and swallowing.

She had a little over one hour of oxygen left in her tanks.

"Oh, fuck-"

* * *

 _A/N: another chapter for ya! This one I had to split up into two chunks because I didn't really want it to be too overwhelming with what was going on. That, and I still need to write a term paper and study for several midterms. God help me._

 _As usual, if you liked it, hated it, or whatever else, leave a review and let me know! I love all comments and I read them all._

 _Oh, and to our friendly guest: Don't worry. Repetitive comments give me life, seriously. I'd probably have abandoned this thing if not for you kicking my ass to keep this ball rolling!_


	6. Chapter 5

**Chapter Five**

* * *

Alberta drew in a shaky, terrified breath as she stared at her oxygen gauge. Another gulp of oxygen pulled from her dwindling supply.

Stay calm. Stay calm. Training. Remember your training.

Alright, step one-

Alberta's eyes flicked over to the section of digital readouts showing the power to the various parts of the plant, and her eyebrows went up. That- hang on a second. The generators were running again. Slowly, like they'd just been turned back on, but-

See? When all my children work together as one, we can accomplish things. I took the liberty of sending them to start the power for you.

Alberta just growled in reply, mind running down her mental checklist. And hang on, speaking of IT…her eyes darted to a small series of buttons on the other end of the panel, and she shoved her rolley chair over to it.

The digital readout was styled as a pressure gauge, and it was showing a pressure of 0kpa. Next to it, another dial showing flow rate- 0 cubic metres.

That section of panelling was devoted to the outflow pipe- from the gas plant into the main pipelines that snaked across the province. It was naturally showing no flow, because the plant was shut down; once it got going again, though, if those valves were open…

Alberta reached for the selection of knobs and switches, ready to set it so that even after she got the plant going, there would be no outflow. IT couldn't be allowed to escape-

Touch those switches, child, and I will destroy your mind. 

Alberta's hand froze. She was reaching with the hand that had been touched by ITs slime- and her fingers splayed outwards of their own accord, locking in place. She couldn't move her arm. SHE COULDN'T MOVE HER ARM-

Alberta frantically kicked away from the panel, eyes wide and breath coming in short, fearful gasps. Oh god. Oh god. Oh god oh god oh god IT was _INSIDE HER ARM_ _IT_ _WAS CONTROLLING HER ARM-_

That's much better. 

The fingers on her hand slowly relaxed, and Alberta drew in a shaky breath, wriggling her fingers to check that they were her own again. Yes. Fuck. She held the arm close to her chest, shaking in fear.

Are you ready to get the plant started, or do we need to fight about this some more? You're lucky I haven't sent my obedient children to batter your little door down and forcibly subject you to my true blessing. We had an agreement, child. Get the plant going and I'll allow you to keep your mind intact- for now.

Alberta shuddered.

"F-fu-ff- Oh, god. Just fuck you. Yes. I'm going. I'm going, I'm going, I'm-"

You don't need to waste breath speaking to me. Your thoughts will suffice.

"The spo- the spoken word is one of the triumphs of man, and I'd sooner eat your fucking filthy slime-cock than give it up."

So be it. You'll come around to my way of thinking in the end. You're only delaying the inevitable.

Alberta just snarled and glanced at her phone.

The video had almost sent. She started typing with her good hand, using her forefinger to hunt-and peck the keys, and heedless of any typoes.

 **AB: tell everyone to stay away from this entire area**

 **AB: theres black slime in the gas its too dangerous**

 **AB: its turning the people into zombies and no im not kidding**

 **AB: this isnt a jo**

Less typing for help and a bit more working, child. 

Alberta put the phone down and turned her attention back to the control panel. Fucking fine.

Battery Limits looked to be within operational parameters. Not that she'd know since she didn't have the specs for this plant-

It is within acceptable levels. Proceed.

IT sent an image, torn from the mind of one of the workers no doubt, showing the relevant information in his memory of the plans for the plant. Alberta shuddered as the thought faded. She was receiving memories from dead men, beamed straight into her mind.

This was so fucked up on so many levels.

Okay. Okay. Startup checks looked good. Okay. Next up, filling with liquid. The pressure in the system as a whole was basically zero, and to get the plant going again, they would have to bring the pressure back up.

Alberta set the appropriate switches and opened her mouth.

"If you don't have some fluid to fill the pipes so we can get this plant up to operating pressures, then I can't help you," She said flatly, "We normally have a bunch of water trucks in here to fill the system to operating pressures, but since we don't-"

Don't worry, my child. I will take care of that.

"Oh? And how are you going to do that, exactly?"

I will use my essence to draw your fuel from the ground. Please be patient, this will take me a few moments.

Alberta blinked. That- how the fuck? It _kind_ of made sense, IT was already in the well beneath their feet and already in all of the pipes, but- how the fuck was IT going to suck the gas up and through miles of pipe? It took pumps specially designed for the job HOURS to perform the same task-

She shook her head. That didn't matter. She just needed to keep her eyes on the prize.

She turned her attention to her phone, tapping the screen to wake it up again. The video hadn't sent, but there was already a reply from Miss Sharma:

 **SSharma** **: are you sure? This sounds pretty ridiculous.**

 **SSharma** **: proof please**

Alberta growled and ripped her monitor off her waist, pulling her phone back and taking a picture of the readout.

604 ppm. The door hanging open had equalized the concentrations in here.

 **AB: believe me now?**

 **AB: I took a video okay**

 **AB: just for fucks sake**

 **AB: don't let people drill here again**

The picture finally arrived, the little indicator for "seen" popping up on Alberta's small screen.

 **SSharma: oh my god**

 **SSharma** **: Evacuate. Now. Get your partner and GET OUT. WHY HAVEN'T YOU EVACUATED YET?!**

 **AB: I cant leave**

 **AB: nathans dead**

 **AB: and if I leave I will suffocate**

 **SSharma** **: WHAT-**

Alberta sent a picture of the back of her hand. Under the harsh fluorescent lights, her black veins were starkly visible in the picture.

 **AB: if you come back to investigate**

 **AB: don't get it o n your skin**

 **AB: you wll die**

Alberta glanced up at the gauges and shivered. The pressure was starting to rise in the pipes. Some way. Somehow. It was impossible. No, ** _IT_** was impossible.

IT wasn't letting her close off the pipe to the outside world, meaning- she basically had a few minutes before this stuff started to trickle into the pipeline out of this place.

Alberta scrolled back up in the text message conversation to check the progress of the video. It was so close to being sent. So, so close.

Are you ready to switch on the rest of the equipment? 

"Yes. You know it'd be a lot easier to get this system pressurized if you'd _let me close the goddamn outflow pipe-"_

And let you seal off my only connection to the outside world? I think not. I will see to it that my essence gets to market. Don't fret.

"I ain't fretting about fuckin' shit…" Alberta muttered, eyes flicking to her phone. She reached deep into the pocket of her blue coveralls, brushing her fingers against the slim paper matchbook tucked safely inside, and nodded to herself.

Soon.

* * *

 _A/N: God almighty, another short little chapter for your judicious consideration! We're getting close to the end of this crazy little epic and I sincerely hope you all enjoyed it! I'm also sorry for the delay between chapters; school is kicking my ass something fierce._

 _God knows why I enjoy weaving literary allusions into friggin' fanfic, but hey man, to each their own._

 _Oh, and hey, guest: it's alright to repeat yourself. Your reviews are the highlight of my damn day, seriously. You give me the drive to keep this shit going, and I don't even know your name!_

 _As per usual, if you liked it, hated it, or whatever else, be sure to leave a review!_


	7. Chapter 6

**Chapter Six**

* * *

She is plotting to destroy us.

The thought swirled through the "minds" of the dozens of "men" who shambled around the plant. All of them had the same thought in unison, and all of them had the same response to it.

Hatred. Hatred and fear.

We must stop her.

IT purred in assent at this conclusion.

The "workers" began to shuffle towards the control room from wherever they were standing. Jaws slack, eyes blank, black sludge dripping from every crack and crevice of their faces. Their blood was black. Their cells no longer craved for oxygen. No longer needed it.

They were, in a scientific sense, no longer alive.

One of their number was quite close to the control room, a broad smile on his face as he slowly walked up the stairs.

When he had awoken that morning, his name had been Nathan.

A blurry memory passed between the few dozen of them- a snatch from "Nathan's" mind of her slipping the slim white matchbook into her pocket.

But that wasn't true. He hadn't seen her put the matches in her pocket, not that Nathan knew that. But they could hear her thoughts through IT; IT was feeding them the disjoined images from her mind, slowly, piecemeal morsels thrown to starving dogs to inflame their rage even more.

The hisses and snarls of his brothers and IT echoed in "Nathan's" vacant brain, and he smiled wider. ITs black blessing dripped from his mouth onto the ground, and he exhaled another puff of the glorious gas.

He would help his brothers and IT.

"Nathan" was happy as he climbed the stairs. The swirling thoughts of his brothers told him they were coming too. Coming to break down her door. Make her stop her silly quest to destroy IT.

Fire will consume us all, they hissed between themselves, she will destroy us. We can't let her destroy us.

Almost there. "Nathan" said, thoughts lost in the miasma; they all thought together, really, a human horde or a human herd. There was no leader. Only IT.

"Nathan" climbed the steps, drops of ITs blessed liquid dripping from his body the whole way up the stairs.

He arrived at the door and balled his fists, limply slamming his entire body into the door; heedless of the damage he'd do to himself.

For the good of many. He was replaceable. One of countless expendable cogs in the horde that IT would care for as IT seethed across the landscape.

He slammed into her little door again, driving his body on, throwing all of his weight into it. Something in his shoulder shifted unpleasantly- had he just broken something? It didn't matter. He needed to batter this door down. Needed to batter the door down. Needed to get inside. _Needed to get inside._

 ** _"Let us in…"_**

* * *

Alberta nearly jumped out of her skin when something slammed into the door, the reverberations shaking the tiny control room and the tiny antechamber.

She was out of time.

Her mind raced in a panic, hand scrabbling for her gas monitor. No. No. No-

Alberta was out of time, and she needed to change plans. Now.

There exists in chemistry a concept related to gases. The term is "Lower Explosive Limit." Simply put, it refers to the minimum concentration of a gas required in the air for it to explosively ignite in the presence of a spark.

Alberta knew full well that the LEL for H2S was way, way, WAY above the threshold for death, and way, way way above the current concentration in the room. If she struck her match now, the most that would happen would be- would- Alberta had absolutely no idea what the fuck would happen. Not much was her best guess.

Math. She needed to do some math. 4% was the LEL for H2S, multiply that by 10,000-

40,000 PPM. She needed to sit around with her thumb up her ass until the concentration of deadly gas was _forty times greater_ than the point where a single breath would cause _instant death._

The door shuddered again, and an idea clicked into place. They- the workers- _they exhaled H2S-_

But how the fuck was she supposed to keep them at bay for long enough for the concentration to hit that critical point? One more drop on her skin and she was toast. Alberta spun around, looking for something, anything she could use to create some kind of barricade. They moved pretty slowly, the workers- maybe if she made a barricade, something the air could seep through easily, the concentration could hit the critical point and keep her safe?

Alberta ran into the antechamber, nearly tripping on the filing cabinets she'd thrown in front of the door, and looked around frantically. There was a coffee machine, a big upright thing- and a bookcase full of reports, leaned up against the wall, right next to the entrance to the control room. Perfect.

Alberta rammed her way through the topped papers and shoved the coffee machine aside, eyeing up the bookcase. It was large and built of faux-wood, with a shitty laminate applied on top. The kind of crap you got at IKEA, really. She rammed her hands into the small space between the side of the bookcase and the wall, channelling all her might as a personification into one burst of strength. Eyes closed and mind floating in that strange space between her thoughts and those of her people, she focused, channelling three million heartbeats and three million souls into one explosive burst. The bookcase ripped from its place, teetering and toppling over with an almighty, thundering crash. The ring-binders had spilled out across the floor, papers still floating down around her like cherry blossoms in some fuckin' anime.

That was a good start. The bookcase was tall enough to present an obstacle, but not enough that she couldn't climb it-

The door shuddered violently again, and the metal filing cabinets on the floor screeched as they jerked across the fake linoleum. Alberta stooped down, grunting as she picked one of the metal cabinets up and righted it- sort of. She was already tired and panting from that burst of strength with the bookcase, but most of the papers had spilled out of it, and she threw it haphazardly against the bookcase letting it smash into place.

An idea struck her then, and Alberta grabbed one of the many ring binders scattered across the floor, flinging it as hard as she could over her ramshackle barricade and into the control room. Then, the coffee machine on its little heated plinth got tossed carelessly into place, the delicate internal electrics smashing on contact with the floor. Finally the little coffee table and the chairs all got thrown on the pile, and not a moment too soon, because-

Many, many hands slammed against the door, and this time, with one of the cabinets missing, they managed to jerk it open more than a crack. An arm shoved through the gap, and a chorus of voices snarled at her from the other side; " ** _Join us, sister,"_** they growled and hissed and purred, **_"Let ITs blessings into you…"_**

"Yeah, I think fuckin' NOT!" Alberta screamed shrilly into her mask, scrambling up her makeshift barricade. She was tall enough to hook her hands up into the bookcase up at the top, but swinging her legs up and over presenting something more of a challenge-

The workers slammed into the door again, and this time, the filing cabinet finally failed with a screech of metal and a snapping of pinewood. Alberta lunged over the barrier, head and torso and oxygen tanks over the threshold-

 ** _SOMETHING GRABBED HER BOOT._**

Alberta screamed in animal terror as she felt one of those horrible infected hands grab the end of her steel-toed boots and _pull,_ other hands reaching up for her ankles-

She thrashed and kicked, her heel hitting something both soft and firm and alive-feeling as hard as she possibly could, and she scrambled up and over, tumbling onto the cool linoleum below without a shred of grace. She landed hard on her front, not a long drop, but all that mattered was that she hadn't landed on her oxygen tanks. Right?

Alberta grabbed her gauge and checked. No drop in pressure. If there was a leak the pressure in the tanks would be falling rapidly. The hose-?!

No break in her hose. Okay. Okay. She was good. She would be fine-

There was a roar from the other side of the pile of stuff, a growling of a dozen voices, chanting **_"you will not destroy IT"_** as the workers slammed themselves against the barrier. Alberta snatched up her monitor-

1257 ppm. And _climbing._ 1296 ppm. 1321 ppm.

It was working. This fucking _retarded_ plan was going to fucking _work._

Why do you resist my children so? 

"Because, and this might be a bit of a shock, I really don't want to be a fucking zombie." Alberta snapped into her respirator, dimly aware that replying to the little voice in her head had looped around to being a perverse new normal. Hadn't she told this fucker to shut up?!

They are not zombies. They are still alive. And I have solved all their worries and fears. They are safe in my arms, as you will be soon.

"Oh would you and your fucking children just eat a fucking ** _OH SHIT!"_**

A face shoved its way over the top of the barricade; a human face, with black sludge dripping out of the mouth and nose. He- _IT-_ snarled at her, drops of black gunk spilling from its lips as it forced its way over the barricade-

Alberta lunged for one of the rolley chairs, snatching it up by the backrest without even thinking. She took another deep breath, channelling her strength and ignoring the pain in her muscles and her deep-seated exhaustion, hefting the chair up like a baseball bat and smashing the wheel base into the corrupted worker's head.

There was a hideous crunching sound as she did, the sound of something delicate inside him breaking and snapping off, and then-

He just…slumped.

She'd just killed him.

Alberta slowly lowered the chair, eyes wide behind her mask. She took a step back, worried and nervous-

The black sludge dripping out of his mouth suddenly…blossomed. It spread up, around his face, around his head, growing and smothering his whole body, wrapping him in a cocoon of the black sludge. There was a hideous sound, like all the tissues and organs inside of him were being slurped up by the sludge, and then-

A clattering as three dozen small white objects hit the floor, extruded out of the black mass that was hanging over the barricade like a pile of slowly-moving tar.

 _His teeth._

Alberta closed her eyes and **_screamed._**

Human teeth. She'd killed him and IT had converted all the hydrocarbons in his body into- into more of itself. Into more of ITS mass. _All except his teeth._

This was a fucking nightmare. Alberta leaned her exhausted body against the control panel, taking a few breaths to regain her strength. She was so tired, and so fed up with this shit. She just- she just wanted-

The image that flashed into her mind was one of peace and calm, the one she always groped for in timed of fear or stress. A warm, sunny field. The long green wheat stalks waving all around. Sitting on the back tailgate of her truck with her twin brother, under the bright blue sky, enjoying the warmth and the openness of the heavens all around them, an unbroken blue dome stretching from horizon to horizon. In the distance, mountains, blue and purple with snowcaps. The clouds overhead. The chirping of birds.

And in the little fantasy, Alberta turned to look at her twin, smiling at him broadly. And he smiled back, and _Alberta watched in utter calm as the blessed black began to drip from his bright green eyes like a trail of joyous tears and-_

Alberta snapped out of her reverie with a scream of terror, grabbing at her head. IT was fucking with her-she'd gotten distracted- and there was another face jamming its way over her barricade. She glanced at her monitor-

27,562 ppm. Holy _fuck_. With so many of them clustered in the antechamber and hammering on her barricade, the concentration was climbing, faster and faster-

Another head was snarling down at her, this one with a mask. Alberta grabbed her trusty chair once again, grunting with the exertion and exhaustion as she swung it in a wide arc, smashing it into the worker's head as hard as she possibly could. This guy didn't immediately eat it like the last one had, though. There was a sickly crunch, sure, but he just shook it off, like it was no big deal-

She swung the chair again, desperate, afraid, hear pounding in her chest and arms screaming at her in agony to _please, please __stop swinging that heavy heavy chair around-_

The chair connected with a sickening crack, the neck jerking like she'd just smashed the worker hard enough to give it whiplash.

It slumped, like she'd just knocked it unconscious- but it was crucially still breathing. Well, "breathing"; breathing was relative. Alive? That was a sticky question too. Whatever the case, the black ooze inside of the worker had yet to swarm out and digest it, turning it into more of the black slurry that was slowly working its way under her barricade. And dripping from the remains of the dead worker. And just…oozing across the floor. Alberta shivered and took a step back, away from the slime that was slowly crawling its way towards her.

She reached into her pocket, pulling out the matchbook and slapping it on the control console, hands shaking. Check the monitor again. 30,056 ppm. Three-quarters of the way there.

The ooze continued to crawl towards her, and Alberta shuddered.

"Get that shit away from me or I'm gonna hop up on the control panel, and I'm GOING to stomp on some buttons when I'm up there." Alberta snarled, taking another few steps away from the black ooze.

I think I've made more than enough concessions for you. You are a disobedient brat and I am frankly tired of your abrasiveness. In fact, I might not even let you have my blessing. I might just devour you wholesale. And I'll trap your Dust so you cannot come back, _Miss Alberta._

"You can't do that!" Alberta spluttered, wishing she sounded a lot less like a petulant child. Dust. How the fuck did IT know about her becoming Dust?!

I'm in your mind. I know your thoughts. You are going to kill us all. And you are thinking, praying, hoping that you will swirl away into the sky on a cloud of golden Dust. Well, Miss Alberta, I am here to tell you that I'm afraid you won't be doing any such thing. I'm going to trap your Dust. I'm going to rip all the memories from your mind and use your knowledge to pump my essence to market. I'm going to devour your mind, devour your flesh, and **devour your Dust.**

"Fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you FUCK YOU FUCK YOU **FUCK YOU-** " it became a chant. A mantra. Alberta just kept repeating those words to herself, over and over, as she turned her attention back to the matchbook, ripping all the matches out of the cardboard, one by one, dropping the paper matches in a pile on the console-

Her hand seized up. The hand with the inky black locked up, and refused to move. Fuck. Fuck!

"NOT A- ** _FUCKING_** -GAIN!"

Submit to my will. Or I will remove your _pathetic little mask._

 ** _"NEVER!"_**

Alberta screamed with a fury, a viciousness, that sent IT reeling back ever so slightly at her words. Alberta grabbed her own wrist with the hand that was still under her control, slamming it down into the console and bumping the matches up in the air- but mercifully, not onto the floor, into the encroaching pile of sludge.

She glared down at her own limb, thoughts flashing into her mind that if she had a hatchet, she'd just chop it off at the fucking wrist. Be rid of this monster and do what needed to be done.

Alberta's eyes flicked away from the hand she was grappling with, the one that was twitching and jerking and straining under commands that certainly weren't hers. First, she glanced at her phone- and just nodded, sharply, to herself.

The video had sent.

"Fuck. You're so fucked. You're so fucking fucked." She snapped to nobody in particular, half to IT and half to herself and half to the empty godless universe.

SUBMIT TO ME. **I AM DONE PLAYING YOUR PATHETIC LITTLE GAMES** , CHILD.

Alberta's eyes flicked over to her H2S monitor, lying there haphazardly on the control panel.

Silently ticking upwards. Slowly. Oh so fucking slowly.

She shuffled over to it- and yelped when one of her boots hit the inky black ooze that was ITs tarry mass. Her boot was just resting in a thin puddle of the stuff, but- it started slowly climbing up her boot, started its slow march towards her skin-

The readout on the monitor was 39,567 ppm.

500 parts per million more. So close. So fucking close…

Alberta's eyes locked onto the matches. The little strike-anywhere paper matches. Her only hope of salvation.

She let go of her hand-

It lunged up towards her mask, and Alberta screamed and grabbed it by the wrist, fighting a part of her own body even as ITs slime crawled higher up her boots, as ITs minions pounded at her barricade, as IT tried to devour her.

She managed to grapple her hand away from her faceplate, mind racing. One quick glance at the monitor-

40,001 ppm.

Alberta sucked in a deep breath.

 **Now.**

She let go of her hand, letting it fly upwards and latch onto her mask, grappling with the edges of it, ripping it off her face against her will. The plastic screen tumbled from those possessed fingers and towards the floor as the black slime lunged up her boots, the clear screen swallowed up by the sludge.

Alberta snatched up one of the matches, frantically scraping the flimsy paper surface across the console's surface-

Nothing. The match just bent and broke. No. NO. NO-

 _ **I WILL DEVOUR YOUR SOUL FOR THIS.**_

The slime crawled higher, another worker rammed their way overtop of Alberta's barricade, and the province snatched up another match. IT screamed with all of ITs hundreds of thousands of stolen voices, animals and humans and who knew what else, howling in rage and fury. The slime surged up her legs, up her waist and stomach, sinking into her clothing, sinking into her skin-

Alberta struck the match.

And the fireball soared thousands of feet into the sky.

* * *

 _A/N: All that's left now is the epilogue. Hell of a thing; I think this is my first properly finished fanfic that's not a oneshot!_

 _Not much to say, really. Big shoutout to Guest for keeping this train rolling and giving me the motivation to keep up with this craziness. Thank you so, so much, dude. Seriously, DM me sometime, I'd love to chat with you on Discord or Skype or something._

 _As per usual, tell me your thoughts! What parts did you like? What parts did you hate? I really want to know, so leave a review! I read and appreciate all of them, trust me._


End file.
